Nissan's Oliver Rowland made outstanding use of his final seconds of attack mode to snatch victory in the Mexico City Formula E race away from the Porsches of Antonio Felix da Costa and Pascal Wehrlein.

Having left his second attack mode deployment later than the other leaders, Rowland looked like he could menace the works Porsches and Andretti's Jake Dennis if he could catch them from fourth place once he took it.

Then a safety car for David Beckmann's Kiro Porsche being left stranded on track following contract with Lola Yamaha Abt driver Zane Maloney appeared to wreck Rowland's plan as it seemed unlikely the race would go green before his attack mode ran out.

But Rowland had one minute of the extra power and all-wheel-drive left when the race went green, and he used it superbly to surge past all three cars ahead in the half-lap he had of performance advantage before his attack mode ran out.

Da Costa came back at Rowland over the remaining laps, after another safety car for pre-race championship leader Mitch Evans running into Dennis's team-mate Nico Mueller, finishing four tenths of a second behind.

Rowland dedicated the win to his performance engineer Asier Sebastien Galardi, who was rushed to hospital on Saturday morning for appendicitis surgery.

Porsche had filled the front row with Wehrlein and da Costa and controlled the first half of the race. Dennis appeared most likely to deprive the works cars of victory as he got among them during the early attack mode shuffles but ending up having to settle for fourth.